Daniel, You are right. However, is this important? Is there still a way that your voice will be listened? I am not sure, and this is what makes me worried. Once upon a time there were a young officer who dissolved the Convent. Later this young officer become a Cezar. He was listening only to those we wanted to listen. "On engage, puis on vois" - said Napoleon. The question here, how to avoid a new Napoleon. BTW, not everything was bad that Napoleon introduced. One good example is the metric system. This was a basic reform, and Napoleon was able to push it through. Do we need a Napoleon now? I do not think so, however, just telling this is far not enough. We should have a real reform proposal. Or very clear arguments why there is no need for reforms. What Stuart says is too far away what I would like to see. Alvestrand is much closer. In my view Stuart is similar to Napoleon. I fully aggree with Harald Alvestrand' analyse as far as the tasks of ICANN concerned. However, only partialy with the triumvirate concept. The identification of the three areas of control (technical, social, economical) is OK for me. However, just one representatives for each area is far not enough. Representantatives of each area should have overlapping terms of services. And each Areas should have three representantatives. This is a minimum requirements and might be the maximum as well, if we woul like to keep the governing body small. The bottom up mechanism applied today for selection of some representatives of ICANN is not bad, anyhow. One other issue: I do not understand why would be appropiate to call the representatives of the "social area" as governement officials. I have seen an Ambassador just happen to be the brother-in-low of the new Prime Minister. If you guess the county, you might have more than one hit. It would be much better if the representatives of social area would be those already worked in the user oriented working group ot the IETF, TERENA, etc. Some bottom up mechanism should be applied here as well. Uhh, for the time being these were my - strictly personal - comments, apologies for my English. I do think there is a real danger, we should at least tell is openly!! Regards, Geza Turchanyi On Mon, 11 Mar 2002, Daniel Karrenberg wrote:
Personal point-of-view:
Before discussing structural reform, ICANN needs to clearly define its activities and the services it provides. Any further steps such as changing ICANN's structure have to follow from a clear understanding of services and activities.
Since ICANN needs to (re)-establish the confidence of the communities it is serving, ICANN would be well advised to restrict its activities to the absolute minimum. In my view Harald Alvestrand's thoughts are a good starting-point for defining the necessary activities of ICANN. Once ICANN has established the confidence of the communities, it may consider starting less essential activities.
A detailed discussion of Stuart's proposal does not make sense to me before ICANN's activities are clearly delimited. Constantly trying to take the second step before the first will result in constant stumbling with a fall at the end.
Daniel